Monday, 28 January 2013

David Byrne & St Vincent - 14 January 2013, Hamer Hall

I’ll
be putting up a pair of two-night shows over the next week or so, and
in both cases the second night is substantially better than the
first. In the case of this show the reason is a bit hard to pin down.
In part it’s because the first night was the first show they’d
done in around three months. That’s hard enough for most bands, but
particularly where your show features extensive (albeit simple)
choreography. The other factor is that there was a better
relationship with the crowd on the second night. Not that they were
any more engaged, but simply that the band played better and the
crowd became more enthusiastic which made the band play better and so
on. Having said all that, I should also say that (unlike the Weezer
show to come) the first night wasn’t actually bad, just not as good
as the second.

Setlist
wise these shows haven’t varied, but that’s a bit more
understandable when you realise there’s a choreographed routine for
every song that the band has to perform while playing. Mixing in one
or two different songs across the two nights would have been nice,
but I can understand why they didn’t. Going into this show I hadn’t
actually heard Love this Giant and, while they mix in a few of their
own songs, the bulk of the material is from that album. So ultimately
the success of the show rests on the quality of that album and their
performance of it. Fortunately, both are really really good.
Particular highlights for me were Lightning, I Should Watch TV, and
Outside of Space and Time. On the other hand, there weren’t any
duds amongst the songs they played.

Finally,
I was in the front few rows for this one, while it was kinda cool to
see what way David Byrne dresses (right) the sound didn’t seem
quite as good. In particular, the vocals aren’t as far up as I’d
like. My suspicion is that this would have been better further back,
where the unamplified sound of the horns would have had less of an
effect. Ultimately, this is a pretty minor quibble, and lots of
people might not even notice it.

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